Reed used to sing about doing heroin. I always assumed he had some actual experience with it.
If so, 76 years is an impressive lifespan for a junkie.
A great deal - 1960’s to the 1980’s. He had been clean for decades, but unfortunately he apparently contracted the hepatitis C that eventually killed him back in 1966 while sharing a needle. It just took a long time to catch up with him, as it sometimes does with hepC. Airman Doors, USAF was name-checking a famous song, but technically speaking he is probably exactly correct.
How could that hepatitis kill him if he got a new liver in April?
a.) It caused him to get the new liver and liver transplants are hardly risk free in 70-year olds.
b.) Viral recurrences are extremely common even after transplantation and a certain percentage of people will develop cirrhosis again within a few years.
Don’t know which scenario it was ( I’d bet on the first one - his body just never recovered or took to the transplant ), but one way or another it looks like it was the hepatitis, perhaps piled on top of decades of other Keith Richards-level abuse, that did him in.
Chuck Klosterman has a nice remembrance on Grantland: » Remembering Lou Reed
Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) was a close friend of Reed’s and did a tribute show and told a lot of great Reed stories on his podcast yesterday. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get the episode on Penn’s site but you can get it from this rss feed or this direct mp3 link.
Pete Townshend wrote this:
“My heart goes out to Laurie whom I met briefly when Lou played with me at Joe’s Pub in NYC. Lou seemed to have fun that night, and it was wonderful and easy for me to perform with this clear-sighted musician who I had expected to be so difficult.”
His New York tour show was the first real rock & roll concert I ever attended. I went by myself in my senior year of high school. The Velvet Underground tapes got me through a lot of long drives.
My favorite was The Velvet Underground, their 3rd album. It’s a document of a personal journey that affected me deeply. I was able to fit my own life into its framework pretty closely - the mark, to me, of a great piece of art.
The obits I’ve read so far make a point of calling him an artist instead of just a rock star - I agree. He had that power to move us.
So long, Lou.
This is what Peter Gabriel said on Facebook:
Poor Laurie. I feel so bad for her. They had so little time together as a couple. His death a couple of months before Christmas made listening to this short message especially poignant.
I don’t believe in an afterlife, but sometimes I wish I did. It’d be nice to think that he and Nico are making music again somewhere in the cosmos.
The liver transplant was in May.